Nepal power struggle in stalemate stage

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Nepal's politics is back at square one after King Gyanendra's failure to negotiate peace with Maoist rebels and hold elections through "constructive monarchy." The royal experiment provoked a massive urban anti-monarchy movement led by an alliance of five parties, while the rural-based Maoist rebellion continued to grow apace.

The king took charge of the government by sacking Sher Bahadur Deuba as prime minister on Oct. 4, 2002, calling him incompetent to hold parliamentary elections within six months as required by the constitution.

After 20 months of unsuccessful experiments with two hand-picked prime ministers -- Lokendra Bahadur Chand and Surya Bahadur Thapa -- Gyanendra reappointed Mr. Deuba as prime minister on June 2, apparently seeking to cool off street protests and avert a graver political crisis.

Mr. Deuba heads a breakaway faction of Nepal's oldest party, the Nepali Congress (NC), which carries the same name plus Democratic in parenthesis.

The NC (Democratic) party had sought the reinstatement of Mr. Deuba's government, while the five-party alliance agitated against the king's intervention and demanded restoration of the dissolved house of representatives and formation of an all-party government.

Many analysts agree Gyanendra was running out of options in May amid the urban protests and the Maoist war in the countryside. Early that month, he told Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa to resign, and asked the political parties to recommend a person with "a clean image" who could form a coalition government and hold parliamentary elections in April next year.

For three weeks, the five parties, particularly the Nepali Congress (NC) and Unified Marxist and Leninist (UML), jockeyed for the position of prime minister and failed to come up with a consensus candidate. So the king picked Mr. Deuba on June 2 and instructed him to form a coalition government, establish peace and organize parliamentary elections for April 2005.

Mr. Deuba's reappointment as prime minister underlined the king's predicament, and critics questioned Gyanendra's own competence in bringing back the person he fired as "incompetent" 20 months earlier.

Analysts, however, say the king gained some breathing space in the short term by the reappointment. First, the monarch avoided having to reinstate the dissolved parliament, which would have restrained his own activism. Second, the street protests died down following the withdrawal of the UML party from the five-party alliance. Third, the political parties lost their former unity, reducing their ability to cause trouble for the monarchy.

In the emerging equation of urban-based Nepali politics, there are four parties -- the NC (Democratic), the UML, the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), and the Nepal Sadvavana Party (NSP-Mandal faction) -- supporting Mr. Deuba, and an equal number of parties -- the NC, Samyukta Jana Morcha (SJM), Nepal Workers' and Peasants' Party (NWPP), and Nepal Sadvavana Party (NSP-Aanandi Devi faction) opposing him.